Through a glass darkly...?

Someone asked me recently about my interest in Tarot and Astrology. I suppose for someone who was a deeply committed, Evangelical Christian it is a slightly odd path I've trodden, although I know many who have gone the reverse route. Indeed, I used to pray for people to be 'delivered' from belief in the Occult, oblivious to the fact that I believed some pretty strange things myself, such as having a God who came to heel (and heal), Words of Knowledge, Prophecy, etc. But more of that in a moment.

As I've said before somewhere on here, I became a Christian from a very non-Churchy background. I read tea-leaves as a child (fairly accurately sometimes) and believed absolutely that I was from a 'psychic' family. I had a dramatic conversion and renounced all that side of things. I was now in a Flagship Evangelical Church, and it took me a few years to discover the contemplative Christianity which in fact was my more natural habitat. I had come to faith in a small attic room, with a candle and a crucifix and silence. As a ten year old, that was instinctive to me. As a new Christian it was all Noise and Halleujahs, which I also enjoyed but which I now realise never quite fitted who I really was. As the last child in a very noisy family, I somehow had a strong sense of the Numinous which I retain to this day.

I eventually came under the influence of the Charismatic Church, and began to experience what are known as the Gifts of the Holy Spirit - speaking in tongues, having prophetic visions, healing, Words of Knowledge, etc... There was a very strong anti-Occult teaching around, and certainly Tarot/Astrology were considered Satanic. (Which was ironic really. I realised many years later that the Charismatic Church does all the things which Psychics do, but as it's in the name of Jesus that's okay.)

Anyway I was a fully paid-up member, with many experiences of accurate Words of Knowledge, a few prophetic visions and even a couple of healings as part of my Christian experience. I had yet to discover Mother Julian of Norwich and her amazing metaphysical visions, which remain dear to my heart to this day.

In the Eighties, my Ex went on a course paid for by the Church, which was an exploration of Myers-Briggs personality typing. He came back very enthused and explained it all to me. I felt there was some incongruity which I couldn't quite put my finger on... it wasn't for a few years that I realised there was very little difference between the cold reading of Astrology and the prescriptive practice of Myers Briggs. I've been 'typed' several times and nobody is ever quite sure whether I'm INFJ or ENFJ - but they are happy to tell me all about who I really am, based on a label - just like Astrology. Yet this was accepted by the Church although it has a far shorter pedigree. There seemed to be a dichotomy between the spiritual and the secular, and it was okay for Spiritual people to use secular means to predict how people might behave in certain circumstances. Interesting.

I must say here, I do believe that Sun Sign Astrology is ridiculous. I think I share a birthday (not the year though) with Cameron Diaz. So what? However, when you have had the experience of someone looking at your birthchart, asking about your deep love of religion, whether you've finished writing the book and telling you that you almost died at birth, it does sort of impress. All these, of course, can be clever cold-reading guesses, but even so it makes you think.

I don't believe in predicting the future. Not particularly because the Christian God forbids it, but because it rules out free will. I think we can spot trends in our lives, and for me that's where the Tarot is interesting, I know very little about it, but I have been fascinated for years by archetypes. Jung used the Tarot not to predict, but to make sense of the personalities he was working with, As far as I'm concerned, it's a shortcut for stimulating self-awareness. It works for me.

I'm the kind of person who is drawn to what at one time I'd have called Mumbo-jumbo. It doesn't mean I believe it all, but it does mean that I've grown past the point of needing to Be Right and Know The Truth. I increasingly suspect Truth is not as easily pigeon-holed as I once thought. When I became a Christian (having told the Sunday School teacher that I was FAR too intellectual for that rubbish, when I was 12 - cringe...) I decided God would be my working hypothesis unless or until I knew differently. And there came a point decades later when suddenly it didn't quite work for me. By 'it' I mean The Church. God, I take as a given. I still love liturgy and the thought of the link to generations of worshippers - it's just that I hate what I see in the Church today and I simply don't believe that Jesus would have encouraged the judgmental, self-seeking practices of some. That's not to say I'm any better, just that for now I choose not to keep their company.

My situation over the past few years - moving away from friends, settling in a new area with a very poorly child, my own injury and surgery the other year - left me the time and space for much soul-searching. I spent time in silence - the blessed silence for which Evangelicalism never seemed to leave space.

I've read a lot of Deepak Chopra. I've thought a lot about how Quantum Physics really might affect my world view. My sense that it is arrogant to dismiss all other possible world views has grown. I trust that whoever God is, my ship will come to the right harbour for me. We are all on a journey and I no longer feel the need to be the one who is most sure of the route. It seems fairly clear to me that all the 'special powers' which various parties claim as their own preserve must be fairly natural human attributes, and that we ignore them to our detriment.

As the old joke goes, "Faith, Hope, Love abide - and the greatest of these is Tongues." Love is definitely the mainspring of life as far as I'm concerned, in all its many forms, and hopefully if we seek Love, we will learn to be enabling of others rather than condemning them.

I know this can lead to Liberal namby-pambyism but I continue to search my soul, and I continue to do my best. That's all anybody - even God - can ask of me, surely?

Holiday

I took my soon-to-be-Dutch daughter to York and Bridlington for a few days last week. We had a fantastic time, ate well, drank champagne once, laughed almost all the time... It was a lovely break and one I shall look back on and cherish the memories when she has left.

I've always felt (like so many people) that I would love to live by the sea. Usually when I visit I paddle every day. This time, however, I found I didn't want to. We went ON the sea in a sailing boat and - possibly unadvisedly - a speedboat. But paddling didn't appeal this time, perhaps because the skies were mostly grey and the beaches very wet indeed.

One day of our week dawned glorious, and we took the opportunity to travel up to Whitby, taking in Filey and the wonderful Robin Hood's Bay, driving along the coast at Scarborough as we returned to our B&B. The East Coast is simply wonderful; there is an underlying poignancy about it because so much of it is doomed to disappear over the next century. Like Venice, there is a sense of Carpe Diem and a resulting joy at having been there before it's too late.

I never tire of being by the sea. I love Deepak Chopra's analogy of human life being like waves in the sea, constantly in motion and each wave visible for a short time but 'you can't put a wave in a bucket and take it home'. The energy of the sea is that same energy which fuels us all - which IS us all... if you put me under a strong enough microscope, all you would see would be the gaps inside the atoms of which I'm made. It is a salutory thought that everything solid seems to exist only because we have some prior agreement to see it that way.

In a week of riots, it struck me that this is how 'Society' is too. It functions normally only for as long as we agree it. This is why it is important that we refuse to let the media make us fearful for the future - we need to carry on believing in ourselves and our ability to live together. We need to agree to have a good and peaceful land, and not to let terror take over in any form.